yaks

[gordon p]

http://www.paddling.net/fishingKayaks.html?refer=nl032614&utm_source=email_newsletter&utm_medium=email

 

[Ben K.]

Those are some tanks. No love for the 10 footers which I think work really well in our smaller local rivers.

[Eric]

I fished from a 10.5' sit-in for a full day down the Wisconsin River. It was a very windy day with 20+ MPH sustained headwinds. The little kayak was awesome.

 

The first thing I liked about the Perception Swiftwater was how light it was. At 44 lbs, I could easily lift it with one arm and swing it up onto my shoulder. The insides have padding which allowed me to rest the boat on my shoulder and carry the rest of my gear in my left hand. I got everything down to the river in ONE trip. That was really nice.

 

The second thing that was nice was the boat, although small, did have a hatch with storage in the stern. I packed up all my valuables and stowed them in the stern bulkhead for the beginning of the trip until I got comfortable with how the boat handled. I only kept my rod and reel and a few lures in the cockpit.

 

Third, the seat was padded and comfy. I'm used to a hard plastic seat on my Old Town Loon sit-in kayak, so the padded seat was a Godsend. It was designed to keep your legs slightly bent, which was nice. I never used the foot pegs; I just rested my feet on the bottom of the cockpit.

 

When I first got into the kayak, I stayed near the launch and rocked it from left to right hard and played around with it to get a feel for how it handled. (The launch is in a little feeder creek that was flowing swiftly.) There were two laydowns that I had to immediately navigate. The kayak passed with flying colors. Once I got past the laydowns, I tried some sharp turns and turnarounds, both upstream and downstream. It was evident that I wasn't going to have any issues with control or stability.

 

Aside from being more manageable in the wind, the maneuverability of the little kayak really paid off when I got into some pike on buzzbaits and had to quickly turn in the current to play them around logs, etc.